2016 has most definitely been the start (or restart) of a movement for women. From politics to comedy to writers to actors, they are leading all facets of life and gaining success based on their merit versus the way they look. Below are 25 of the most outspoken women this year and a reminder of why we should keep striving for the top. When we see it, we can be it.
Michelle Obama: “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.”
Hillary Clinton: “Dignity does not come from avenging insults, especially from violence that can never be justified. It comes from taking responsibility and advancing our common humanity.”
Shonda Rhimes: “There is one rule. The rule is there is no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.”
Lena Dunham: “When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself. You are not made up of compartments! You are one whole person! What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It’s something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. This is so simple. But I tried so hard to make it complicated.”
Laverne Cox: “”Everyone is a complicated human being, and everyone is strong and weak and funny and scared.”
Gina Rodriguez: “Get an education. The one thing that nobody can take away from you is your education. I’m here, I’m present, I’m a contributor to society, I deserve to be part of this conversation, I have an opinion, listen to me roar.”
Elizabeth Banks: “I am not afraid of much. I kill all the spiders in my house, and I’m planning to go sky diving. I am into girl power, and I’m very self sufficient.”
Freida Pinto: “All people - African, European, American - worry about being different. But I’ve learned that the traits we’d rush to get rid of are the very ones that others desire. People always covet what they don’t have. That’s why we should look at ourselves every now and then and say, ‘I’m proud of myself. I like the way I’m made.”
Meryl Streep: “People will say to me, ‘You’ve played so many strong women’ and I’ll say, ‘Have you ever said to a man, ‘You’ve played so many strong men?’ No! Because the expectation is [men] are varied. Why can’t we have that expectation about women?”
Demi Levato: “I think scars are like battle wounds - beautiful, in a way. They show what you’ve been through and how strong you are for coming out of it.”
Lilly Singh: Love who you are, embrace who you are. Love yourself. When you love yourself, people can kind of pick up on that: they can see confidence, they can see self-esteem, and naturally, people gravitate towards you.
Issa Rae: “Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t want to die alone, but spending quality time with myself 60 to 70 percent of the day is my idea of mecca.”
Felicity Jones: “But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it’s less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, ‘I know what I like doing and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Emilia Clarke: “There are no captions on red-carpet photos that say, ‘This girl trained for two weeks, she went on a juice diet, she has a professional hair and makeup person, and this dress was made for her.’ I just wish they’d say, ‘It ain’t the truth.’”
Reese Witherspoon: “Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their LIVES. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out.”
Chelsea Handler: “People ask me why I’m so hard on men. It’s because they’ve gotten a really easy ride. And it’s not that I think women should take over the world. But I do think it should be 50/50.”
Beyonce: “When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.”
Adele: Be brave and fearless to know that even if you do make a wrong decision, you’re making it for a good reason.
Chelsea Clinton: “We need women who are at the head of a boardroom, like at the head of the White House, at the head of kind of major scientific enterprises so that little girls everywhere can then think, you know what? I can do that, I want to do that, I will do that.”
Ava DuVernay: “Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal.”
Kerry Washington: “I realized that I don’t have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of my life.”
Karlie Kloss: “If you believe in yourself and feel confident in yourself, you can do anything. I really believe that.”
Amy Schumer: I don’t try to be feminist. I just am. It’s innately inside me. I have no interest in trying to be the perfect feminist, but I do believe feminists are in good hands with me.”
Alicia Keys: “Things can be really empty in this world, and I don’t just mean the music world. It can become a very meaningless place if you don’t really understand: ‘who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing?’ To feel fulfilment and have a deeper level of understanding, personally, that is the most important thing.”
Yara Shahidi: “Never jeopardize who you are for a role. Now, I’m not saying you should never change for a role, because the fun of being different characters is adapting different nuances and different parts of the character, but never jeopardize your moral compass or anything like that to have a role.”